Marysol Ortega Pallanez

Marysol is an interaction designer, researcher, educator, and embroiderer. Her work uses design and embroidery (and adjacent arts-based practices) to address social-ecological crises by centering the caring of human and more-than-human relations. This approach cultivates creative autonomy, making space for knowledge and beings typically excluded from future-making, while supporting healing and sustaining living.

She is an Assistant Professor in The Design School at ASU, teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in Visual Communication Design. Previous teaching experiences include the School of Design and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, both at Carnegie Mellon University, as well as the School of Arts, Culture and Humanities at TecMilenio University, Campus Hermosillo in Mexico. In professional practice, Marysol has over 15 years of experience working in the areas of service design and digital products for customer and employee experiences in banking services, retail, telecommunications, and the humanitarian sector in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Mexico, and the US.

Marysol has a PhD in Design from Carnegie Mellon University (2023). She is a Fulbright scholar with a Master in Graphic Design from North Carolina State University (2013) and a BFA in Graphic Design from Universidad Del Valle de Mexico (2004). She is one the creators and hosts of Design in Transition/Diseño en Transición, a bilingual podcast about designing for systems level change toward sustainable and equitable futures.